Deprivation

My advice to you.....
STOP TAKING DRUGS
and maybe you`ll be able to see things a lot more clearer.

wow, brilliant, when did you write this?

I do not think it would be so horrible to scratch each others surface and find just another person. I think it would be liberating to no longer live up to the expectations you set for each other. There is comfort in sameness. There is peace in security and there is passion when the Ivy intertwines with the ivory colmun.

Nice work. I liked it a lot.

I have no idea about what you are trying to say. But good luck anyway.

cheers

This article carries the story of every struggling woman of this society.

But the question that keeps bugging my mind is that how long will all this last?

In response to Jay (Reply #: 36 and Reply # 38):

Dear Jay:

Assuming that you are a South Indian, permit me to say that South India is a hub of some great languages (and cultures). Some South Indian songs (in languages that I can`t understand) sound very sweet and melodious.

Regarding love, I have found one of the best statement in Rumi`s poem about Hakim Lughman/Luqman. I learned this poem through the courtesy of an Iranian friend of mine. Urdu, like your mother tongue (I assume), is also very rich in various expressions of love.

It is, however, quite natural to think that the expressions of feelings are better expressed in our mother tongues than any other language that we don`t understand so well. All languages have, what we call in Urdu, a ``mijaz.``

Sincerely, Bilal Ahmad

to Studebaker,

May be there was a personal experience dimension to that comment, may be my inability, may be even the impossibility of translating some of the poetic narratives of the indian `love songs` to my children, who i feel have an impoverished life compared to mine in the midst of apparent plenty. Language mediates our experiences, our thinking and feeling and I believe that indian languages are more endowed in expressing feelings while english is better for `rationalist` arguments.

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Interesting to see chowkwalas talking about love, what a demented senseless word.

One can declare the greates of `love ` to the sweet heart and next moment say, i really `love` pepperoni pizza. Well now, I have some vague idea about the meaning of the word `love`.

In my silly old mother tongue in India, I can choose among at least 10 words to replace the `love` depending on the circumstance, and I am no scholar in my mother tongue.

Yes chowkwalas, keep discussing love.

Shandana - Very interesting flow of words! A little confused by your ``thinking out loud`` thoughts but yet, impressed by the deep rooted sentiments. When I think of Karachi... I think of a lot of the things you mentioned. Thanks!

=mariam ispahani=

Re: Zehra and Durdana

Well, I always thought I would marry to achieve something that cannot be had outside of marriage. But I think the rules are different in Pakistan.

-!K!-

durdana..

im not assuming.

rizvi

K, tum kaheen say bhi naive nahi hou :)

Re: shandana

``the biggest reason to get married? you`re kidding right?``

I wasn`t. I`ve been told by several Chowkwallas that you were referring to regular sex, I suppose, as the biggest reason to get married. It totally didn`t occur to me. Shows my naivete, huh?

-!Kamran!-

Funny ways women, have she is cross with somebody who in appreciation of the effort she took in looking pretty and attractive brushed past her!

tariqlodi

re: boris_yelstin

``couldn`t understand a word``

You`re not alone. My problem with Ms. Minhas`s writing (when she writes in this style) is that I don`t quite know what one paragrah has to to with the next (... sometime what one sentence...)

Now, either we`re the dumb ones or she`s the emperor`s tailor, pulling fast ones over our eyes with her stream-of-conciousness ramblings, right?

Well, I`d have to admit I suspect the former to be true. Not because I think so many other readers couldn`t be giving `correct` appraisals just to feel they`re adequately contemplative, which these days seems to mean `aware of our darker side` --(they could!); nor because I know Shandana likes the brutality of the truth too much to compromise it with her style. And nor because I do end up feeling, quite aside from any considerations of her reputation, that there is something of great value in what/how she writes (Don`t ask me to put my finger on it though!)

No, I think we`re a little dumb (disclaimer: just u and me, that is) because we think that writing that doesn`t have good, logical structure is trashy. Maybe it`s because we`ve been brought up too much on `understanding` and too little on exeriencing.

The `problem` with Shandana is she doesn`t write tragically... There are no heroes and no real villians in her world. That is why, I think, we end up wondering what `lesson` we`ve learnt. But if we could get ourselves to not expect a tragical ending to her stories, we`d come to better appreciate her art. And what does she offer if not the chemically pure icons of tragedy? Certainly not instant catharsis. Nope, her`s is not a quick-acting drug that gives style to our emotional life. What we get, I think is a slower but more lasting (sometimes haunting), stable (yes!) change in our selves (if we choose to change), effected by that lovely, desperate quality of her being: honesty.

(Yes, I DO know her (I think!) personally)

I can still empathize with the `jackass` who asked her to write about `love [, love, love makes people happy]`. We still could use that kinda stuff... there`s nothing wrong about feel-good writing. But then, that just wouldn`t be Shandana Minhas. Not the Writer anyway. From her we expect greater things.

Keep `em coming, Shandy. Honesty might well be contagious.

Hilarious, Tragic.

At the end of the day, my dear, why bother with men at all (as brutish and cruel as they are)? Perhaps the narrator should find that lovelorn college girl, clasp her to her bosom, and run off to the powerful hand showers together. But I`m afraid she would get bored eventually. Why? Because she finds men irresistable, and she likes to feel superior.

thank you everybody. i wasn`t too sure i should send this piece in but i`m glad i did. thanks bina :)

temporal:

heh! this article was written a while ago, more than a year i think, and definitely before i got married. i wrote it when i was thinking of getting married. and as for the arif article, i have found more blatant (and physically painful) ways of paying him back :)

kamran :

the biggest reason to get married? you`re kidding right?

azizs :

of course i remember romiet and julio. first time i got to die on stage. and i also found something the other day you might remember, a poem from you to me called `friendship`. it read

friendship is niceship
when i look at you
i want to puke

and so on ....:))
we were in class ten at the time. i also found a poem from saad that read

`lovidy love la table tennis
lovidly love and i hit the ball
gonna play table tennis wahoo yeah`

and a letter from amir maskatiya adressed to
`the wierd girl with the crooked nose`

hope you are well.
shandana

I`m thinking of starting the Shandana fan club. Great piece yet again, glad to see you remembered Julio and Romiet. Keep making us think and feel.

Aziz

SameerJB #18

If you are dumb, I am dumber….:)
Spell binding stuff by Ghulam Farid…. Saraiki, by the way, is one of my favorite languages…can’t speak it, but I do understand it a little bit…the reason…. well, you would know anyway….right? saraiki zakirs?

The only thing I have ever heard by pathana khan is mayda ishk ve tooN mayda yaar ve tooN.. also by Ghulam Farid – I think?

sometimes we just need to get over ourselves to be truly good writers.

This is SUPERB writing!

Thank you Shandana.

- Umair

Kamran, Kamran, Kamran
Rubina-esque Kamran:

I would have imagined you to be the last person to enquire about the ``first`` reason. Wake up, yaar, smell the salt. (Hint: Oscar Wilde, commenting on seeing Niagara Falls for the first time, said ``It`s the second biggest disappointment in American matrimonial life``).

Also, perhaps I was not clear. Am not hinting
at trouble in Paradise.

regards

Dear Sir/Madam fhn:

Welcome to the Chowk. FYI, Shandana is married, till the last bulletin came in, to her second love, Arif Abrar, who occassionally sufaces on the Chowk, too.



KAISA PYAR--addendum:

Shandana, despite what you said in the beginning, I have a nagging suspicion that there is more to this than the obvious. Could it be that at least one, possible two statements in Arif`s witty piece irked you?

regards

The experience that is Shandana Minhas...I finally see what all the hype is about. Very dark and very affecting.

Have to agree with Temporal...if art imitates life...then perhaps there is trouble in paradise (if one can call marriage that). I sincerely hope not.

In a response to another article: ``...the loneliness we all feel, which is probably the second greatest reason to want to get married.``

Shandana, what do you think is the first greatest reason?

-!Kamran!-

re: Stateman

i agree that what i said might be a little dismissive and a bit too packed (esp w/ that death of god line which -note to Uncle M- was just a reference to how even religious people have to stucture there lives around the market rather than the wrath of God) but those are the things that came to me when i read this piece, so i blurted out loud.

what i said is not immature. skepticism is a sign of experience not immaturity. i haven`t given up on love...just have a healthier attitude about it ;)

Dear Shandana,

I hope that someone somewhere finally has the sense to cradle the jagged pieces of your soul and give you the security and the love that you deserve. I mean that because there are so few honest people in this snakepit of ours that we call Pakistan, and it takes not only honesty but courage -- very rare courage -- to write the way you do. Our wishes, as always, are with you.

cynical passion and bitter indifference...and I thought the combination wasn`t possible.

I feel like moving back to Karachi.

To Day,mid-night between 14 th & 15th August,52 years earlier Pakistan had already become a nation,while Indians were counting sec. to 12 am.Does that make nation of Pakistan atleast a day older than new nation of India??????I am glad that i never experienced rule by the Brit.So happy independence to Pak. & India!

I am sorry for inadvertantly clicking my Post 7 & 8,causing double post.

Goga,Mubasshir your emphasis on realities & Delusions respectively are scathing ,immature & sound resighined &burnt out.You sound preety young to give up on LOVE.

Bina,being poetic, suave I dont understand you too could call someone ``Jackass`` for asking to write about LOVE.I agree with you about the powerful writing of Shandhana,but she too draws her fire from the treachery of full of slums city.

Unfortunately all of you are scarred (Hopefully temporarily)by harshness that you see around you .

Unhe kaliyon ko haq hai lutfe baharan ka

Jo kaliyan ibtedaye umr se katon me palte hain



Penicillin the most potent at the time of its discovery(Alexander Fleming)didnt grow in a clean,sterile dish but in the rotten mould left overnight.

Chowk has become the meeting place for complainers and for Western minded self-deprecation. Only a homeless would tell the harsh realities of Capitalism who I see in the New York subway everyday. And in the once mighty Russia, people are devouring pig fat to live. There is no perfect solution. Fortune and misfortune coexist everywhere. Accepting the reality might be of some consolation. Going to Rwanda might also have humbling effects before pilgrimages to the ``pristine`` West. Happy Independence Day by the way.

speaking of deprivation; Happy Independence Day to all.

The person who suggested you write about love might have been being a jackass at the time, but I`m glad the suggestion produced such a powerful, moving result.

Bina.

love is sordid and you capture its essence. it is the ultimate state of vulnerability. a feel-good delusion that we all want to believe in because it is one of the last remaining things that makes us feel organically connected. but that comes at the expense of doing away with doubt, reason, etc. especially now when we have internalized the death of god and everyone is on prozac (or self help books)...however, the specter of doubt is creeping in on love; the religion of Romanticism itself. new yorkers know what i mean. there are so many people. how can there be only one. cities are great that way...they give you density with anonymity, intimacy with fear, simulated hyper-reality. makes you want to cling on, but why settle.

KAISA PYAR

Jeena kaisa azaab hay? Teri baataiN yaad aati haiN. One soul, divided again and again, incontrovertible, undiminsihed, unyielding yet seen. Seen in you and me. And all those other teeming millions, 12,130, 900, 6000.

We must have shared the same streets, lanes, boulevards, parks, buildings, planes, routes, seats at one time or another. And not exclusively at that. Why stop at thumbing the nose/s? Don`t you envy the velcro fly?

As usual, words are far behind the thoughts. These fingers can`t keep pace. Now, that thought, that beauty you talk about is everywhere. And nowhere. Not when the tactile urge overwhelms. Forget Tennyson, Asadullah, forget everyone that inherited the fragmented soul. Do we slow down as calendars fade and are filed away in memory`s huge warehouse? Perhaps not, regardless of the physcian`s assertions.


The magic is in love. The magic is in hate. One cannot go from an existential foray into the ethereal ocean of life with only one of them.

Tum aur hum, zindagi ki gaRRhi kay dou phaiyay. As is love and hate. Folks go overboard when seeking gratification with one balm only. I find you constantly inch forward to touch the truth. Is hate a harsh reality, unblinking, unyielding. Or is it controlable?

These days, I`m more inclined to treat them as horses pulling our chariots. One has to accomodate the grays. From wheels to force.
Channelised, purposeful. Seldom. Na Hath hay baag pay naa paa hay rekaab maiN. Daikhiye rakhsh-e-umar kahaN thamay. I hope this is a
correct quote. Hence we whirl. In another time, another place, we would have been whirling dervishes.

(Disclaimer: Am neither high, nor driven. Just drained.)

One of the better one from you in a long time. Ecstatic.

regards,

Note to JB, who, when he finds some precious moments, first scans the replies: Pls. read this article.

Shandana:

this is probably one of the most intense and powerful piece of writing i have read on chowk.

please keep on writing.

brilliant

brilliant

couldn`t understand a single word

Looks like verymuch the hold KALI has on the Bengalis from CALCUTTA(KALI KATTA),& now to be known as ``KOLKATA``

I imagine all the Karachites,have similar sentiments,there is no if,but about it.Personally every city with more than 10 millions in Indian subcontinent are the same-``Bursting at there seams``As for Americans cities i dont like to live in any of them,After New York every other city i saw, Detroit,Chicago,Miami,LA,Sandiego,Houstan.Toranto,Montreal to me they seem the same while approaching it by High Ways(Same if you are flying in)To me they seem like big chunk of ASPHALT during the day time!

I probably never fall in love with a cosmopolitan city,cottage by a no name pond is another thing.

Looks like verymuch the hold KALI has on the Bengalis from CALCUTTA(KALI KATTA),& now to be known as ``KOLKATA``

I imagine all the Karachites,have similar sentiments,there is no if,but about it.Personally every city with more than 10 millions in Indian subcontinent are the same-``Bursting at there seams``As for Americans cities i dont like to live in any of them,After New York every other city i saw, Detroit,Chicago,Miami,LA,Sandiego,Houstan.Toranto,Montreal to me they seem the same while approaching it by High Ways(Same if you are flying in)To me they seem like big chunk of ASPHALT during the day time!

I probably never fall in love with a cosmopolitan city,cottage by a no name pond is another thing.

Bravo! Great article! Unfortunately, those who need to read this most will not read it, and, if they did, would not understand it, and, if they did, would probably want to do you harm.

Keep it going.

Ali Minai

Well done! Simply brilliant in its haunting imagery and a sense of desperation, which it instills in the reader!

Shandana, this by far one of the most distrubing and moving articles I`ve read about state of mind, which is known as Pakistan.